Bouncing back from psychological contract breach: How commitment recovers over time

• Author: Paul G. W. Jansen,Omar N. Solinger,Joeri Hofmans,P. Matthijs Bal
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2047
• Date: 01 May 2016

Bouncing back from psychological contract

breach: How commitment recovers over time

OMAR N. SOLINGER

1

*, JOERI HOFMANS

2

, P. MATTHIJS BAL

3

AND

PAUL G. W. JANSEN

1

1

VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels (English), Belgium

3

University of Bath, Bath, U.K.

Summary The post-violation model of the psychological contract outlines four ways in which a psychological

contract may be resolved after breach (i.e., psychological contract thriving, reactivation, impairment,

and dissolution). To explore the implications of this model for post-breach restoration of organizational

commitment, we recorded dynamic patterns of organizational commitment across a fine-grained longitudi-

nal design in a sample of young academics who reported breach events while undergoing job changes

(N= 109). By tracking organizational commitment up until 10 weeks after the first reported breach event,

we ascertain that employees may indeed bounce back from a breach incidence, albeit that some employees

do so more successfully than others. We further demonstrate that the emotional impact of the breach and

post-breach perceived organizational support are related to the success of the breach resolution process.

Additionally, we reveal a nonlinear component in post-breach trajectories of commitment that suggests

that processes determining breach resolution success are more complex than currently assumed. Copyright

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: commitment; psychological contract; coping; process; within-person; functional data analysis;

repair; recovery; resilience

Psychological contracts between the employee and the organization serve the employee to evaluate how much

contribution and future investment one should dedicate to the organization and how much one should expect from

the organization in return (Rousseau, 1995). Existing research on psychological contracts suggests that shocks to the

psychological contract, denoted as psychological contract breaches, may have detrimental effects on employee

outcomes such as commitment to the organization (Zhao, Wayne, Glibkowski, & Bravo, 2007). For instance, there

is an abundance of research showing that breach is followed by lower levels of organizational commitment (e.g., Bal

et al., 2008; Dulac, Coyle-Shapiro, Henderson, & Wayne, 2008; Ng et al., 2010; Raja et al., 2004; Zhao et al., 2007).

If the employee cannot expect the organization to provide returns on his or her contributions to the organization, the

individual responds with lowering investments, including one’s commitment to the organization. But an important

question that has not been investigated yet is whether, once a breach has occurred, organizational commitment—as

an indicator of the state of the psychological contract—could recover from such a shock.

Even though longitudinal studies have recentlybecome more prominent (e.g., Conway & Briner,2002; Dulac et al.,

2008; Ng et al., 2010;Robinson & Rousseau, 1994), scholarshave traditionally zoomed in on one elementof the breach

episode (i.e.,the perception of breach) whileleaving another element of a breachepisode (i.e., post-breachreactions and

violation resolution) unexplored (cf.,Bankins, 2015; Tomprou et al., 2015). Thepost-violation model (Tomprou et al.,

2015) was specificallybuilt to address this omission and provides a framework of different ways in which individuals

*Correspondence to: Omar N. Solinger, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Management & Organization, VU

University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: o.n.solinger@vu.nl

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 05 January 2015

Revised 09 July 2015, Accepted 13 July 2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 494–514 (2016)

Published online 18 August 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2047

Special Issue Article

may respond to breach. This is an important theoretical contribution to the field, because currently, it is unknown

whether people are able to recover once a breach has occurred. Moreover, we do not know what are the main

characteristics of the recovery process.

Because the post-violation model has only been recently published (Tomprou et al., 2015), it has not yet been

empirically tested. In particular, longitudinal research tracking the dynamics of breach resolution in the post-breach

period is virtually nonexistent. In addition, the post-violation model itself may be refined and extended by more

time-based empirical research. That is, the model explains potential differences between pre- and post-breach

psychological contracts, but does not specify how individuals arrive at these renewed psychological contracts over

time (i.e., the actual process of resolution).

To address this, we adopt a process approach, studying contract breach as a discrete event and reacting to breach

as a process stretching out over a period of time (Bankins, 2015; Conway & Briner, 2002; Rousseau, 1995).

Specifically, we investigate individuals’trajectories of organizational commitment before, during, and after

breaches experienced among 109 individuals experiencing various job changes in academic working life. Our study is

the first to closely monitor breach as a dynamic episode consisting b oth of the breach event and of individual post-breach

commitment trajectories up until 10weeks after the breach.

Moreover, the commitment trajectories of individuals before, during, and after the event of a breach likely depend

on contextual factors (Bal et al., 2010; Morrison & Robinson, 1997). Investigation of these factors is important to

understand why some people recover more easily, when recovery is facilitated, and when recovery is delayed. First,

we argue that a greater emotional impact of a breach, which in the literature is referred to as “violation”(Morrison &

Robinson, 1997), will diminish the chance of quick recovery after a breach, while a weaker emotional impact will

speed up the recovery process. Similarly, when organizations provide support to the employees once a breach has

occurred, the recovery process may speed up (cf., Bal et al., 2010).

This study contributes to extant theorizing about the person–organization relationship by supporting and

extending the post-violation model (Tomprou et al., 2015). That is, we ascertain that post-breach trajectories of

commitment (which logically follow from the post-violation model) indeed differ mainly based on the success of

recovery after breach. We also support the proposition that personal and organizational factors relate to the odds

of successful breach resolution. Additionally, we extend the post-violation model by showing that there are

substantially different ways one may get at these post-breach end states (e.g., via delayed recovery and premature

recovery), which each impinge on the final state of recovery. We argue that a model of post-breach recovery should

take two dimensions into account: (i) whether commitment bounces back from a breach or not (i.e., the relative

success of breach resolution) and (ii) its (nonlinear) trajectory; these dimensions are fundamental to recovery and

are explained by different factors.

Theoretical Background

The post-violation model

Contract breach refers to employee perceptions regarding the extent to which the organization has failed to live up to

its promises or obligations (e.g., Morrison & Robinson, 1997; Zhao et al., 2007). In other words, breach is a

perceived discrepancy between an employee’s expectations derived from the psychological contract and the actual

experiences. In the seminal work (Rousseau, 1995), psychological contract breach (henceforth breach) was

conceptualized as event where an employee perceives a discrepancy between what has been promised (or is obligated)

and what has been delivered. The post-violation model (Tomprou et al., 2015), based on self-regulation theory and

coping, provides explanatory principles for the different ways in which breach perceivers resolve their breaches in

the aftermath of a breach event and reestablish their psychological contracts. Self-regulation theory assumes that

individuals monitor their current experiences with one’s employer relative to a standard (i.e., the psychological

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT BREACH RECOVERY 495

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 494–514 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job